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Show State Medicine Threat To Freedom (CONCLUDED) Every wage-earner, every self-employed self-employed person and every employer em-ployer would be compelled to contribute exhorbitant payroll taxes, eventually mounting to a tax of 8 or 10 per cent on every paycheck, to support this system and the cost of medical care, instead of being reduced, would be doubled and trebled by bureaucratic overhead. The record rec-ord is clear in every country where compulsory health insurance insur-ance has been adopted. It is cheap in quality, 'but extravagantly high in price." As opposed to governmental plans, there are available to the people of the United States and of the State of Utah, voluntary insurance plans covering the serious illnesses that generally cause so much financial embarrassment embar-rassment when they occur. These plans are provided by the Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which are non-profit organizations, and by many of the large national insurance in-surance companies of the country. coun-try. Persons having a low income can find among these plans, one which will come within their ability to pay and which provide not only adequate care in cases of sickness or injury, but also allow al-low the right to the patient to choose his own doctor and hospital. hos-pital. Already more than one third of the people of this nation na-tion are protected against the financial burden of serious illness ill-ness through these voluntary plans and the rolls of those protected pro-tected are growing daily. As a practicing physician speaking for the medical profession, pro-fession, may I impress upon you the fact that in this, as in all other problems affecting his patients, pa-tients, your doctor's primary interest in-terest is the good of his patient. We cannot believe that the inauguration inaug-uration of a system completely opposed to everything held sacred sac-red to the American people is the answer to the economic problem, prob-lem, or for the good of our pa-itients. pa-itients. We are firm in the belief that free enterprise will provide an answer acceptable to all. and one which will not inevitably reduce re-duce this nation to the status of a Socialistic state. R. V. LARSON. M. D. |